Microsoft Talks Tech Trends, Not CEO Search

Microsoft laid out its prospects for exploiting technology megatrends but sidestepped one big question: what’s happening in the search for a new leader.

The software giant kicked off its first meeting with financial analysts in two years by noting the attendance of John Thompson, the lead independent director who is leading the hunt for a successor to CEO Steve Ballmer. But it swiftly added that executives will provide no update about the matter.

“The board continues on the process we laid out in late August,” said Amy Hood, Microsoft’s chief financial officer.

The meeting–taking place in Bellevue, Wash., near Microsoft’s home base of Redmond–was hampered by a power failure that caused a temporary delay in the proceedings.

Before the interruption, Chief Operating Office Kevin Turner provided an array of financial metrics and details of Microsoft’s progress of coping with four trends: the cloud, mobility, big data and social technology.

While the company faces headwinds in areas such as PC sales growth, Turner said, “we see some incredible opportunities.”

Turner began with some details about where Microsoft gets its revenue. Enterprise accounts–primarily business users, as well as government agencies–account for 55% of Microsoft’s business he said, while consumer and online sales account for 20%.

He was particularly enthusiastic about Microsoft’s success with Office 365, an online-enabled variant of the company’s suite of PC programs. Turner said that business has an annual run rate of $1.5 billion–crossing $1 billion faster than any product in Microsoft history.

“We should blow that away this year,” he said.

While Google Inc. has been attacking Microsoft enterprise customer with online applications of its own, Turner said 440 customers have now come back to use its products.

Besides a series of products growing quickly in the enterprise sector, Turner rattled off a series of statistics about consumer-oriented products–including Xbox, Microsoft’s videogame console.

He noted, for example, that Xbox is gaining popularity among people who use the device for watching videos and other applications–and some 40% of them are female, a notable demographic shift in the male-oriented console market.